


you were sharp as a knife

by dollsome



Category: Reign (TV)
Genre: Gen, Modern Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-25
Updated: 2019-10-25
Packaged: 2021-01-02 19:43:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21166874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dollsome/pseuds/dollsome
Summary: “I think your mother’s trying to kill me,” Mary says in an undertone to Francis. (Or: modern day courtly drama at the family pumpkin-carving Halloween party.)





	you were sharp as a knife

**Author's Note:**

> For my dear derevko, who hit me up with the Halloween-themed prompt "Modern day Reign, pumpkin-carving. To quote Tim Gunn, make it work!"
> 
> Does it work? I don't know. Does it exist? Yes. Do I miss Mary and Catherine's magnificent rollercoaster of a relationship? Always.

“I think your mother’s trying to kill me,” Mary says in an undertone to Francis.

Catherine is dressed as a fairytale queen for the night’s festivities and looks like she’s stepped right out of the pages of a storybook. The kind where queens like eating the hearts of their enemies, to be precise.

Mary is dressed like a huntress, but just now, she feels more like prey.

“Yes, Mary,” Francis whispers back, impatiently adjusting the prince’s crown he wears so he can concentrate on his pumpkin. “My mother’s going to murder you in the middle of the annual family pumpkin-carving Halloween party.”

“You mock, but I mean it. Have you seen the way she looks at me? There are a lot of sharp objects in here.”

“If she’s going to murder anyone, it’s Bash for bringing my father’s ex-girlfriend as his date,” Francis counters. “Or Kenna, for being my father’s ex-girlfriend.” He frowns. “Or my father, for cheating on her with a twentysomething.”

“We were separated,” Henry intones from where he’s carving a very angry-looking face into his pumpkin.

“Not _that_ separated,” Catherine answers in clipped tones. Of course she hears it from across the room. Henry scowls and goes a little paler, looking more like a ghost king than a proper one.

“Believe me,” Kenna says, disgusted, from where she’s carving a flower crown onto the cranium of her pumpkin, “if I could take it back, I would. I was seriously going through something.” She turns to Bash. “Why did we come tonight again?”

“I have no idea,” Bash says with tragic resignation.

“We don’t exactly fit the theme, do we?” Kenna adds, gesturing to hers and Bash’s pirate costumes.

“No,” Catherine says flatly.

Mary doesn’t know Catherine well yet, but she knows already that it’s very unwise to go against the theme.

“The point is,” Francis finishes, murmuring into Mary’s ear, “there are multiple people here she’d rather kill than you.”

Mary glances at Catherine. Catherine looks up from where she’s simultaneously helping little Charles and Henry Jr. with their pumpkins, lecturing Claude for her sexy-princess costume, and making light, disparaging remarks at Henry’s pumpkin-carving skills that are sure to make his tenuous grip on good humor crumble before the end of the evening.

Catherine gives Mary a frosty smile. It chills her to her bones.

“Maybe don’t drink anything she gives you,” Francis relents.

“Thank you,” Mary says, kissing his cheek.

Later, when everyone else has given up on family togetherness and gone their own separate ways (Bash and Kenna have taken the boys trick or treating, Claude has escaped to hang out with the cute young chauffeur that Francis says she has a crush on, Francis is resting upstairs with a headache, and Henry is hiding in whatever corner of this palace of a house is farthest away from his wife), Mary still obstinately sits in the dining room, carving her pumpkin. She’s never been much of an artist in this particular field before, but something tells her not to give up this time. She has no intention of splitting up with Francis, no matter how much his family disapproves of her. If that means she has to spend hours creating the perfect _I’m not going anywhere _pumpkin, so be it.

All of the other jack-o’-lanterns are already alight in a line on the table, the fire bringing their myriad shapes to life, bathing the room in eerie orange.

Mary is determined to provide the grand finale.

Finally, she finishes carving and places a candle in the heart of her creation.

With the flame dancing inside, her design looks just the way she’d hoped it would: the silhouette of a dagger plunging through a heart. (The anatomical sort, not the sweet kind on valentines.)

A tribute to heart-eating queens, maybe. And prey that refuses to be die quietly.

“Macabre,” comes a voice behind her.

Mary turns to see Catherine coming back into the dining room. She’s taken off the opulent crown she’d been wearing earlier. Her red hair hangs loose in waves now.

“Very,” Mary says. “I thought you might like it.”

The corner of Catherine’s mouth twitches upward the slightest bit. “Come with me.”

_Time to die,_ Mary figures, and follows.

Catherine takes her to the giant kitchen and takes a few bottles of hard cider out of the fridge. She opens the bottles and offers one to Mary.

Mary doesn’t recognize the label. Maybe it’s some secret brew that only uber-rich titans of industry who lack the self awareness not to dress up like fairytale royals know about.

She stares at the bottle, remembering Francis’s teasing warning (surely it was teasing?), and takes a decisive sip.

Catherine makes a little humming noise in her throat, then leaves the kitchen without saying anything. Mary follows after her.

They settle back down in the dining room, sitting opposite each other at the table. All of the lights in the room are turned off now, leaving only the fire. Candlelight dances on Catherine’s face, turning her witchlike, formidable and glorious.

“Francis’s girlfriends have usually fled in fear of me by now,” Catherine remarks, eyeing Mary with what might be admiration or brewing murder schemes. It’s hard to tell which in the shadows.

Mary lifts her chin. “I don’t frighten easily. Never have.”

Catherine gives her an appraising look, then clinks her bottle against Mary’s. “Good. I enjoy a worthy opponent.”

“Me too,” says Mary, realizing for the first time that she means it.


End file.
